


On Snow

by kylee



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: Christmas Spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 15:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kylee/pseuds/kylee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosencrantz <i>did</i> listen to what Guildenstern said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Snow

It was no longer autumnal, no longer brown and gold -- it was white and white and white, white as the dove's wing or the cloud that cracks with sunlight, white as the page unmarred with meaning, white as snow. Snow, Guildenstern had noted, was not remarkable in Denmark, and even less remarkable at Christmastide. It eased him in its uniformity, its predictability; it came around as regular as a coin will come up heads.

"You like snow, then?" Rosencrantz had asked him.

"I like to know where I stand."

Where Rosencrantz stood was a field of white on white and white and white -- it could have been anywhere, but it was Christmastide in Denmark. It _was_ remarkable, he thought. If you looked, it was more than white -- there were shapes that shimmered under observation, like crystals of cut glass, as clear, as intricate. They threw out rainbows in the low light of the moon ... they clung to his hair and his lashes ...

"What's remarkable," Guildenstern had told him, "is ephemeral," and no sooner than Rosencrantz remembered it than a crystal dissipated from his sleeve. "If a unicorn appeared in the yard, it would remain remarkable for as long as it took to remark on it -- for one man to say to another, 'my God, was that -- ?' And then it would disappear into the ether, or worse, into the common experience. It would be another kind of horse to ride to court."

Well.

Rosencrantz searched through flakes like flowers, or the leaves of ferns, or the fur of something mythical. They all disappeared as soon as he caught them, all sublimed out of his grasp and into the ether. He took a paper tablet out of his coat, and scribbled ...

On Christmas day, Guildenstern awoke to something fluttering down from the canopy of his bed at court. It was a piece of paper -- no. It had been a piece of paper, before some man took a knife to it. What it was now was the ephemeral writ large, clear and intricate. And when he looked, he saw his bed had been covered all over in flakes of paper, each carved to precision in the unique shape of a snowflake.

"I thought it would be nice," said Rosencrantz, "to give you a unicorn."


End file.
